Credit Suisse (CS) agreed to pay $135 million to settle the dispute about the alleged manipulations in the foreign exchange trading, according to a statement released by the Department of Financial Services in New York. The accusations focused on the chat rooms frequented by forex traders to manipulated forex rates, according to the DFS.

CS will take a pretax charge of a similar size against fourth-quarter profits, the Zurich-based bank said in a separate statement.

«Corrupt Culture»

In its statement, the New York-based authority concluded that the Swiss bank had violated the state’s banking law: «Certain Credit Suisse executives in the bank’s foreign exchange unit deliberately fostered a corrupt culture,» said Maria Vullo, financial services superintendent. Foreign exchange traders abused «the trust of their customers over the course of many years.»

The Swiss bank in its statement said: «Credit Suisse does not admit to any findings of fact and the resolution does not involve any fraud-based violations.»

Outside Monitor

Credit Suisse also agreed to engage a consultant approved by the DFS to review and report upon agreed remedial efforts by the authority, for one year.

The fine agreed between regulator and Credit Suisse is relatively smaller when compared with other banks. In 2015, UBS paid 342 million Swiss francs for its involvement. The biggest Swiss bank also had to pay 774 million francs to the Swiss financial market authority Finma and U.S. and U.K. overseers.

Rival institutes Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, J.P. Morgan and Citigroup also had to pay fines. The total fines tally is 4.3 billion francs.